NewsClips: Social Notes, 1954

NewsClips is a recurring feature in which I share transcriptions of newspaper stories about my ancestors.

I owe today’s NewsClips to a mostly vanished newspaper institution, the social-happenings column in which all news, however minor, was fit to print. Reading it makes you feel as if you’re channeling Gladys Kravitz, the eternally nosy neighbor from Bewitched. In the Times Record of Troy, N.Y., the local news page carried many column inches of these snippets, headlined only by the name of the town or neighborhood whose business was being chronicled. I have found a couple of dozen of them pertaining to my relatives, and will group items by year.

• The Times Record, Troy, N.Y., Saturday Evening, January 16, 1954

Open house was held at the Kennethe Apartment [sic] Monday when Mrs. Margaret Haigney Roache celebrated her 84th birthday anniversary. She makes her home with a brother, Martin, and sister, Mrs. Mary Walker. Mrs. Roache is the widow of James Roache of Watervliet.

Martin Haigney was guest of honor at a birthday party Thursday at his home in Kenneth Apartment [sic]. Mr. Haigney, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, was 89 years old [sic — see Notes]. He resides with his two sisters, Mary Walker and Margaret Roache.

Notes:
Martin Haigney, Margaret (“Maggie”) Haigney Roache and Mary “Mamie” Haigney Walker were my gg-uncle and gg-aunts, children of my gg-grandfather, Martin Haigney (c.1829-1911). At the time of these items they were living in the Verdoy section of Colonie in Albany County, N.Y. The January visitors included my father’s sister, Bernadette Kenyon, and her husband, Harold, and my dad’s oldest sister, Catherine. I’ve kept the name spellings as they were in the newspaper.

The item about Martin Haigney’s birthday gives his age as 89 — likely a typo! According to census data and Martin’s obituary, he was born in November 1874, making him 80, not 89, in 1954.